


small inconveniences

by ladymedraut



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Angst and Feels, M/M, ghost!hamlet, which means, yep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 17:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6087625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymedraut/pseuds/ladymedraut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Horatio, he whispers, watching the other man’s thin chest rise and fall.<br/>Horatio, he says, a bit louder but still reticent to disturb him while he is reading. It’s the Illiad, again, he notes.<br/>Horatio! he finally screams in the tavern. It’s the first time he can ever remember raising his voice to him, but still Horatio makes no sign of noticing his presence.<br/>Hamlet decides that death is horridly inconvenient.</p>
            </blockquote>





	small inconveniences

_Horatio,_ he whispers, watching the other man’s thin chest rise and fall.

_Horatio,_ he says, a bit louder but still reticent to disturb him while he is reading. It’s the _Illiad_ , again, he notes.

_Horatio!_ he finally screams in the tavern. It’s the first time he can ever remember raising his voice to him, but still Horatio makes no sign of noticing his presence.

Hamlet decides that death is horridly inconvenient.

* * *

_Horatio,_ he hears a voice whisper in his dreams, and he wakes in the morning with an aching heart.

_Horatio,_ a voice that sounds too much like the late prince’s chimes from behind his shoulder as he curls up in a corner with a tattered copy of the _Illiad_.

_Horatio!_ a voice screams inside his skull when he limps into the tavern. Horatio ignores it. He can picture Hamlet’s disapproving glare, telling him that drowning his sorrows in cheap ale won’t do anything to help.

But Hamlet isn’t here anymore.

* * *

 

_I cannot believe this,_ Hamlet gripes as he follows Horatio around Elsinore’s dreary halls. The other man’s feet drag, scraping against the flagstones, and his eyes never raise themselves from the floor. It has been days since Hamlet has seen him eat more than a few bites at a time and even longer since he has seen him express a genuine interest in something. _I didn’t stop you from drinking that poison so you could mope around this godforsaken castle. Do something!_

As always, Horatio does not respond. Hamlet rails and rages at the unfairness of it all—why is it that his father’s ghost could speak to him, but he cannot reach Horatio? Horatio needs him more than Hamlet ever needed his father, he realizes that now.

But all he can do is wait and watch as Horatio draws back from the world that Hamlet once convinced him to enter, returning to the dark corners of the library and moldy manuscripts that speak of the fall of Troy and the deaths of heroes.

_Horatio,_ he whispers, reaching out a ghostly hand that passes straight through his shoulder. _Please._

* * *

 

_I cannot believe this,_ his prince’s voice echoes through the dim corridors and Horatio wants to turn, wants to see him standing there with his arms crossed over his chest and his black shirt untucked, but he dares not look back. _I didn’t stop you from drinking that poison so you could mope around this godforsaken castle. Do something!_ Hamlet’s voice commands him, and he genuinely wants to do something, but he can’t quite figure out what.

When he was a boy, Horatio had thought he had his life all sorted out. He would go to Wittenburg, he would immerse himself in his studies and impress his professors with his devotion to philosophy and history, and he would be offered a teaching position. He had thought that was the only path open to him, but then the Danish prince had stumbled into his life and turned everything upside-down. He had always had the sinking feeling that Hamlet’s life was slated to end in tragedy, but he had thought that maybe—just maybe—he could ward off the inevitable. He had been wrong.

_Horatio. Please._ And just for a moment, Horatio feels the steady pressure of Hamlet’s hand on his shoulder again. But Horatio knows it can only be his imagination, and so he stamps down the sob building in his gut and hurries on his way to nowhere.

* * *

 

_What are you up to, little scholar?_ Hamlet murmurs, leaning over the sleeping Horatio’s shoulder. The table in front of him is littered with maps of Denmark and Norway and France and England. A thin scrap of parchment bears lines upon lines of script in Horatio’s cramped handwriting, lines that upon further inspection appear to be directions.

_And where will you go, Horatio?_ Hamlet’s fingers itch to move the inkwell by his hand before he spills it, but he is just a shadow and he can touch the glass bottle no more than he can touch Horatio.

Horatio mutters something unintelligible under his breath and slowly picks himself up off the table. Hamlet reaches out to smooth his tousled hair, but his ghostly fingers cannot feel Horatio’s coarse hair beneath them and it is Horatio’s own hand that fixes his hair, brushing straight through Hamlet’s.

* * *

 

Horatio is nodding off when the voice stumbles into his mind again. _What are you up to, little scholar?_ his prince whispers, a hint of laughter in his voice. His eyes flicker open, scanning the maps in front of him. Fortinbras has promised him a post in the Norwegian court if he chooses to sail across the North Sea, but Horatio flinched away from the offer. He did not think he could ever find solace amongst stone walls again.

_And where will you go, Horatio?_ He can’t tell whether Hamlet sounds hopeful or sad, and then he realizes that it doesn’t really matter because it’s not Hamlet, it’s just an echo in his head.

“Pull yourself together, Horatio,” he mutters under his breath, pushing himself back into his chair. He can feel his hair standing up at odd angles, and he knows that if Hamlet were there, he would be smoothing it back into place with that loving smirk on his lips. But Hamlet is dead, and so Horatio brushes his own hair out of his face—just as he had brushed Hamlet’s dark hair out of his face as he lay there on the floor of the throne room—no. No, he is leaving Denmark and putting all that behind him. He is leaving the ghosts and the echoes and the shadows. And he does not know where he is going, but he knows that he is going today.

* * *

 

Hamlet watches Horatio saddle the little sorrel mare and doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. Happy, perhaps grateful, that Horatio is finally leaving grim Elsinore behind. Sad, more than a bit regretful, that he cannot follow. He is bound to the castle where he died, doomed to haunt it until… Until when? Is he stranded here in this in-between place forever?

If only he could get through to Horatio, just once before he leaves. A moment, is that too much to ask?

Horatio ties down his saddlebags—Hamlet can tell by the way he lifts them that they are too light—and leads the mare out of the stable. He is going to be gone before the sun sets, and Hamlet will never set eyes on him again. There is no chance of Horatio returning to Elsinore after he leaves. This is his last chance to make him listen…

_Horatio…_

* * *

 

Horatio saddles the little sorrel mare and isn’t quite sure how he’s supposed to feel. Happy, perhaps grateful, that he is finally leaving the site of Hamlet's death behind. Sad, more than a bit regretful, that he will never return to the last place he ever saw his prince. He secures his saddlebags—filled with a change of clothes, a few days’ worth of food, and not much else—and leads the mare out of the stable.

The sun is setting as he swings himself up into the saddle, and he turns the mare to face Elsinore one last time. If things had worked out just a little bit differently, he might have spent the rest of his life here at Hamlet’s side. But now he’s going somewhere—anywhere—else.

_Horatio…_ the wind sighs, and Horatio wraps his hand around the hilt of Hamlet’s rapier. He probably shouldn’t have taken it, but the prince had no further use for it and Horatio couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it with Fortinbras.

“Hamlet,” he breathes, and for just a moment he catches a glimpse of a black-haired man on the ramparts, the sun setting through his translucent body as he reaches out to Horatio. “Goodbye.”

And he turns the mare to the south, and he urges her into a gallop, and he does not look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Clearly I had a lot of free time on my hands when I wasn't running lines or working scenes...


End file.
